BACK INTO RAMSFORD

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

On Friday night some Deacon children roving on the edge of the woods on the north side of town found an old automobile, apparently abandoned, with no one inside. The Deacons, ranging in age from nine to fourteen, engaged in an extended debate about how best to approach the vehicle and eventually decided to send Gloria, the oldest, to peer in the window. She found the keys still in the ignition. When the car was started by Juliette, eleven, the radio played a cassette of a classical composition that Sharon, the youngest Deacon, described as “peaceful but with energy.” The trunk contained a half-dozens bags of uncured cement, and in the back seat there were remnants of a take-out meal of chicken sandwiches. One, still mostly intact, indicated a hurried departure. A folder labeled “Map of the Forest” was missing its contents. The ten-year old triplets, Vanessa, Louise, and Penny, eventually encouraged Juliette, by acclaim the most confident driver of the seven and at any rate the only one entirely comfortable with a manual transmission, to take the car back into Ramsford. 

RANGES FROM THE BOISTEROUS

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The Vecsey Toy Company’s collection of miniature figurines have long since come to be regarded as an indispensable part of any home collection. The entries for this holiday season are on a superior scale to those imagined for many a moon. The figurines, one inch in height as in every other year, stride confidently across the line separating craft from art, notably those the represent birds of prey (which hover roughly one foot in the air with no visible means of support) or lake fish, which begin to turn pale and gray if left in open air but which take on vibrant colors when submerged in water. All are rendered in the most exquisite detail imaginable, and one would be forgiven for believing that they are real, and that the rest of us are oversize effigies. And then there are the specimens of tiny female humans, billed as a counterpart to the successful series of men released earlier in the year, which was fine in its own right but cannot live up to the new arrivals. The set ranges from the boisterous (“Carol, On a Bender,” complete with a not entirely rebuttoned skirt) to the more philosophically inclined (“Andrea, Contemplating Being,” the subject of which is nestled in a comfortable leather armchair with a miniature copy of Buber’s “I and Thou”). Other new Vecseys include a first-time mother, staring at a newborn baby with a wondrous expression that is half-smile, half-scowl; and “Foreign Secretary,” which depicts an attractive middle-aged woman en route from her flight to her hotel, sitting in the backseat of the town car paging through a report on regional security. All are lovely and diverting creations that provide collectors with a ready-made store of surprises.

SOME EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

There are some extraordinary circumstances in connection with the discovery, on Monday, of a body in a field near Marcum Heights. For starters, the body was surrounded by what the patrolman who came upon it described as a “field of force.” The patrolman also noticed a pungent odor of sulfur that seemed to rise in twin columns on either side of the body's face, which wore an expression the patrolman called “serene.” The body was dressed in a blue overcoat many sizes too large for it, and in the pockets were found a registered letter, a watch, one small pencil, one large pencil, and a small silver sphere. The case is further complicated by the fact that Marcum Heights does not exist, and that all the flowers in the field were in full bloom.

DISTINGUISHED INVALIDS

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A canvass of the neighborhood the evening before last revealed that many men are still prevented from going outside. Mr. George Derry, the distinguished singer, and Mr. Thomas Fox, the druggist, just to name two, along with Mr. William Wilson, Mr. Nicholas Olmanza, Mr. Louis Caspar, Mr. Henry Caspar, Mr. Harold Robinson, Mr. Edward Menkens, and Mr. Stanley Rotabidel. The cost of these confinements is already being felt throughout the town. A plan to wreck a train on the line between Pointersville and Flat Falls was brought to light yesterday morning. Platelayers arriving to work discovered that a slab of timber, ten feet long, ten inches wide, and two inches thick, had been removed from a nearby mine opening and laid across the rails near Water-Bowl Bridge. Mr. Olmanza and Mr. Rotabidel are usually posted at the guard-house there, and would likely have foiled the plot. The board was smashed to bits by passing trains, and no one was harmed, but railway officials concede that a more serious outcome was possible. Similar stories were reported at the workplaces of the others. The Caspars' parking garage saw the theft of two vehicles. Mr. Menkens’ restaurant grill was turned on and several hamburgers were cooked. An employee of Mr. Fox reported that one of the pill drawers felt “lighter by half.” And a woman arriving for Mr. Derry’s late show at the Navy Club was gravely disappointed to learn that the entertainment would instead be Allan McGregor, the “singing sculptor,” who performs light opera while fashioning a likeness of an audience member selected at random. “I suppose it wasn’t all that terrible,” said the woman, Ms. Barbara Moore Davis. “But there’s nothing like hearing George Derry.” She attempted to illustrate by singing the first verse of “Carisbrook Castle,” but her effort, while game, exposed a lack of formal training.

BY NEXT NOVEMBER

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Information regarding Dr. Kroger’s new type of device for plumbing the depths of the human mind in imitation of Dr. DeBronze has been garbled at best. It was stated in last summer’s issue of New Thought Journal that the shiny metal box, which measures one cubic meter in each of the three known spatial dimensions and has a weight of one hundred pounds, does not differ greatly in appearance from other Kroger machines, save for the presence of four small dials on the front face and an airtight, double-walled chamber with a special apparatus that permits a descent into the human consciousness to a depth of about 10,000 microcogs. Great promise was reported in the original article, which attested to Kroger’s ability to extract nearly ninety percent of all conscious thoughts in less than four minutes. Kroger himself has trumpeted the results in several interviews. And yet, those who have attended the most recent trials have reported that the real yield is far smaller, perhaps only seventy percent. Dr. DeBronze, for his part, has been both an ardent booster of Dr. Kroger’s efforts and a leading skeptic, penning an open letter that ran in a special edition of NTJ. “To my esteemed colleague,” he wrote, “I can only say that it would be to your eternal benefit to be both honest and modest about the level of thought that your ‘silverbox,’ as I like to call it, can map precisely. When I was visiting, a young woman was asked to think of a color, a number, a vegetable, and a world leader from history. The device immediately seized upon green and 82, but it stumbled slightly on the vegetable, indicating mushroom instead of pumpkin, and it missed the world leader entirely—the young lady was thinking of Golda Meir, and the box detected Anthony Eden. Even I could have guessed that! That is just a joke, Dr. Kroger, but by it I mean to show how stubbornly opaque some thoughts remain, even to the most sophisticated apparatus. I commend you in advance for being more straightforward about your achievement.” The construction of these devices has already begun under the auspices of a team of Swiss and American engineers, and Kroger had planned to bring them to market by next November.

NOT IMPRESSED BY GERRITCORN

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The three movements from Gerritcorn’s “Horse Latitudes” rather disappointed James. He had not heard them before, but from the gyrations of the press following the work’s premiere in Seattle he had been led to expect something much more profound. He knew the rich origin of the phrase. Sailors took a portion of their pay before embarking on their voyage, and they had to work for free until their debt was paid. For those coming west from Europe, this month of debt generally expired in the subtropics, and the moment was marked by the throwing overboard of a horse-shaped effigy. James felt strongly that the idea had echoes in nearly every aspect of life. But the line drawing on the front cover of the program played out the story with more feel than the musicians on the stage. He did take note of one oboist, a young man of about thirty, whose shock of red hair was visible even from the back of the hall. He and this young man were each holding secrets from the other. The young man did not know that he was James’s son, and James did not know that the young man was a murderer. 

A LETTER HAS ARRIVED

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A Letter Has Arrived—

Dear Sir, 

I have half a mind to climb up to Cracko Hill and try from there to see the stars. I used to go there when I was a child, and recall quite clearly that once upon that spot stood a venerable old oak, which seemed to me at the time to be a thousand feel tall, and mightier than the tallest stone tower. I have that comparison in my mind because of a cousin of mine who was once imprisoned in a tower. That one was only a few stories tall, and in fact it was a silo behind her parents’ house that had been converted into a guest house, and she was not imprisoned there so much as she was a resident, and she spoke of the place fondly, dubbing it a “lighthouse of the land,” and she threw great parties there the summer after college, and one of them gave me the occasion to be reintroduced to a man named Matthew Gatterson, and within three weeks of that meeting we were carnally involved, and within three months we had added a mutual romantic bond to the mix, and within the year we were living together, and last year we were married. We honeymooned down the coast. Thank you. That’s very nice to say. At any rate, I have been telling Matty about Cracko Hill, and the ancient tree that once grew on that spot, and he asked if I could take him there, and I half-smiled and tilted my head so that his request slid down into the space between us. I think that I was practicing irony, or seduction. Later that night, when I thought about it, I realized that he was probably serious. Matty usually is. And so I appeal to you to help me find my way back there. Is it north or south? Is it where it rains constantly, or where the earth is scorched and dry? Please help. It is all so long ago.